 The Humanist Tradition
Humanism is an outlook inherent in our very lives as men and women living together in communities. Elements of humanist beliefs are found throughout history in all parts of the world - in the teachings of Confucius, for example.
The most fundamental ethical principle - the Golden Rule or ‘do as you would be done by’ - is first found in Egypt almost 4,000 years go, and it re-appears in almost every religious and ethical tradition. It springs from human existence, not originally from any religious teaching.
As a result humanist beliefs appear and re-appear, however much is done to suppress them. Humanism is certainly the oldest ethical and philosophical tradition in Western civilisation. Developed in Classical Greece and Rome, it was expounded by thinkers as diverse as Socrates, Protagoras, Aristotle, Democritus, Epicurus, Aesop and Lucretius. After the Dark Ages, humanist thinking - albeit accompanied by at least nominal religious beliefs - reasserted itself in the Renaissance and in writers and thinkers such as Erasmus and Shakespeare. In the Enlightenment and after, we find David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Denis Diderot, Jeremy Bentham, the Curies and endless other and more modern examples.
Increasingly in the 19th century religion came under explicit challenge from thinkers and reformers. However, the explicit formulation of Humanism as a ‘lifestance’ or system of belief came about only in the 20th century when it became acceptable to live openly as an atheist or agnostic.